The descent of the Republican Party into total insanity is now nearly complete. When extremists and con men like Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan are "too moderate" for the spittle flecked, knuckle dragging party base, you know that things may beyond the point of no return. A piece in Salon looks at the sad state of affairs, much of which was engineered by the GOP establishment that put short term electoral success ahead of any remote long term strategy or comprehension of the damage that would be done by the Frankenstein monster they created, i.e., the Chistofascists/Tea Party dominated party base. One irony to me is that the Christofascists blame gays for the fall of the Roman Empire, but in reality it was ignorance embracing, incurious people like them who killed Rome and ushered in the Dark Ages. Here are column highlights:

It is time once again to ponder the question of whether the Republican
Party can be saved from itself – and if so, what exactly there is to
save and why anyone should care. The GOP’s current struggle to find
someone, or indeed anyone, who is willing to serve as Speaker of the
House of Representatives, the position once held by Henry Clay and Sam
Rayburn and Tip O’Neill – the president’s most important counterbalance
and negotiating partner, and traditionally the second most powerful job
in Washington – is of course a tragic and/or hilarious symptom of much
deeper dysfunction.

How large are Heaven and Hell, measured in cubits and ells?
Not large enough, it appears, to encompass the pride and arrogance of
the House Freedom Caucus, the group of 40-odd far-right Jacobins who
first sabotaged Boehner’s speakership and then torpedoed the candidacy
of his chosen replacement, Kevin McCarthy.

In the great tradition
of doomed revolutionaries, the Freedom Caucus prefers death, or at least
political annihilation – which will be theirs one day, and sooner than
they think – to the dishonor of compromise.

They could just as well be called the Suicide Caucus – or the Satanic Caucus, in the grandiose spirit of Milton’s fallen angel, who fights on with no hope of victory: . . .

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the Republicans were boring and
small-minded but not especially crazy. They pursued a disastrous
foreign-policy agenda during the Cold War, but they were not alone in
that, and one could argue that marked the first stages of betraying the
tradition of Edmund Burke-style conservatism. On fiscal and social
issues, they stood with country-club middle management and small-town
Presbyterians and the affluent families who owned the third-largest bank
in Indiana or a chain of hardware stores in and around San Diego.

I believe that the Republicans have brought their gruesome predicament
upon themselves and that they richly deserve their fate, although they
have certainly been nudged toward the precipice by Democratic cowardice
and incompetence.

Whoever the GOP shoves to the podium, whether it’s Ryan or Darrell Issa
or Jason Chaffetz or someone even dumber than them, will either have to
default on the national debt in November and shut down the government
in December or face yet another enraged right-wing revolt. Either way,
this Congress (and most likely the next one too, regardless of who is
elected president) is a lost cause, and the future viability of
bipartisan politics is very much in doubt.

That big Republican victory in the 2014 midterms was a masterfully
engineered work of fiction – an artifact of voter suppression, voter
apathy and the intensive gerrymandering imposed by GOP-dominated state
legislatures after the 2010 census. Republican candidates won barely 51 percent of
the vote, but thanks to the imaginative redistricting plans imposed in
numerous states, that modest margin was dramatically over represented in
the final result. Now the Republicans in Congress, along with the “mainstream” or
“establishment” Republican presidential candidates, are discovering what
should have been obvious all along: The Frankenstein voter base they
bred and nurtured with so much money and so much cunning does not like
them or trust them. The fanatics of the Satanic Suicide Caucus and their
supporters do not want the current Republican leadership to govern
anything, or even try to.

When they [the GOP base] repeat its catchphrases about fiscal responsibility and social
order in their metallic parasite voices, what they really mean is
fiscal holocaust, social anarchy and class war against poor women, black
people and immigrants. They dream of conquest, but whatever they can’t
conquer – starting with their own political party – they will happily
destroy.

As past posts make clear, I view Paul Ryan as a liar and hypocrite, especially when it comes to his feigned allegiance to Christian values even as he restlessly presses the GOP's reverse Robin Hood agenda. Now, with the increasingly insane Republican Party in disarray, some are seeing Ryan as the white knight needed to same the GOP from its self-wrought chaos. Sadly, too many in the media continue to call Ryan out for what he really is: a con man. Paul Krugman, fortunately, doesn't display such reticence. Here are highlights from his spot on column in the New York Times:

As the Paul Ryan clamor gets louder, a public service reminder: he’s a con man.

I don’t mean that I
disagree with his policy ideas, although I do. I mean that his
reputation as a serious thinker is based on deception, both about what
he has actually proposed and how it has or hasn’t been vetted.

Take, for example, the famous “fiscally responsible” budget plan. As I explained way back when,
what Ryan did was to present a sort of vague fiscal outline to the
Congressional Budget Office that envisioned implausibly large cuts in
spending and mysterious increases in revenue, and stipulated for the
purpose of the exercise that CBO take those numbers as given. The budget
office hinted broadly in its report that it didn’t believe any of it,
e.g.:

That
combination of other mandatory and discretionary spending was specified
to decline from 12 percent of GDP in 2010 to about 6 percent in 2021 and
then move in line with the GDP price deflator beginning in 2022, which
would generate a further decline relative to GDP. No proposals were specified that would generate that path. [My italics]

Ryan is to budget analysis as Carly Fiorina is to corporate leadership:
he’s brilliant at self-promotion, but there’s no hint that he’s actually
able to do the job. There is, in particular, no example I know of where
he’s actually been right about anything involving budgets or economics,
and some remarkable examples — like his inflation screeds — of being
completely wrong, and learning nothing from the experience.

So is this really the GOP can do? And the answer, sad to say, is that it probably is.

With science increasingly confirming that sexual orientation is no more of a choice than eye color or skin color, the anti-gay stance of anti-gay religious denominations is becoming increasingly clear as to what it is: blatant discrimination conflated with a deliberate embrace of ignorance. Hence why the Roman Catholic Church is only growing in backward and ignorant areas of the world such as Africa. Adding to the ugliness of such discrimination is the fact that homophobia in Africa was imported by Christian missionaries who rode rough shod over indigenous cultures. Yet at the Vatican synod on the family, homophobic African bishops are demanding that they and their ignorant followers need
“time to deal with” homosexuality and other “issues from our own cultural
perspectives.” That's akin to white Southerners demanding time to get over viewing blacks as inferior and wanting to maintain Jim Crow laws. The Washington Blade looks at this batshitery. Here are highlights:

Vatican Radio reported that and brutalize of Archdiocese of Accra said countries need “time to
deal with” homosexuality and other “issues from our own cultural perspectives.”
He also highlighted the need for “the dignity and rights of all God’s sons and
daughters need to be upheld,” as Vatican Radio reported.

Palmer-Buckley’s comments come four
days after he and other Catholic bishops began a three-week gathering in Rome
during which they will vote on a document that specifically addresses the
family.

Leaked drafts indicate that it reiterates the church’s opposition to
unions between gays and lesbians.

Davis Mac-Iyalla, a gay Nigerian man
who received asylum in the U.K., was among the LGBT Catholics who gathered in Rome earlier this month
ahead of the start of the bishops’ meeting.

Mac-Iyalla on Thursday noted to the
Washington Blade the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of Nigeria has supported
anti-LGBT measures in his homeland, including a 2014 law that punishes those
who enter into a same-sex marriage with up to 14 years in prison.

If Archbishop Palmer-Buckley wants the freedom to discriminate against and brutalize gays, then lets grant white supremacists the same rights. There is really no difference. Both bigoted mindsets arise from ignorance and a fear of those who are different, so Palmer-Buckley needs to support anti-black bigotry if he wants to support anti-gay bigotry. The man is a disingenuous douche bag.

Reactions to Kevin McCarthy's surprise removal of himself from consideration to be the next Speaker of the House continue. The biggest issues and reflections are (i) who can possibly restore order, if not sanity, to the Republican Party, and (ii) how did the GOP become so insane and out of ouch with reality. It seems that there is some consensus - at least outside of the GOP - that the party establishment bears responsibility. Most however, refrain from getting at the real root cause: the empowerment of the Christofascists and evangelical Christians in the Republican Party. When I resigned from the Virginia Beach City Committee, I stated that until the party once again honored the concept of the separation of church and state, I could not be a member of the GOP. In the intervening years, things have only gotten worse. With the rise of white evangelicals and Christian extremists, we have seen the attendant rise and acceptance of racism and white supremacy within the GOP (the "Tea Party" is merely a label to hide the real nature of the insane party base). What is frightening is that there seems to be no way to stop the metastasizing cancer that these people represent. A column in the Washington Post looks at the GOP's self-destruction as a serious political party. Here are excerpts:

At this point, I worry we’re going to
start finding members of the Republican establishment curled up in
their beds, eyes clenched shut and ears covered with trembling hands,
moaning “make it stop, make it stop, make it stop.”

Pity their suffering, but remember that they brought it on themselves.

The insurrection that propelled
billionaire Donald Trump into the lead for the GOP nomination and
ultimately made House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) surrender his gavel
in frustration rages on unabated. This was no mere summer skirmish. If
anything, the rebellion is gaining strength.

It is dawning on the party grandees that their most recent predictions of Trump’s demise, like earlier ones, were wrong.

And there is a reason for Trump’s success that
goes beyond his skill at burnishing his personal brand: He is saying
what much of the GOP base wants to hear.

The
party establishment has only itself to blame. From the moment President
Obama took office, Republicans in Congress have been selling the base a
bill of goods. They demonized Obamacare and cynically swore to repeal
it, knowing they could not. They balked at sensible immigration reform,
deciding instead to do nothing. They engaged in Pyrrhic brinkmanship
over the budget and the debt ceiling, fully aware that in the end they
would have to back down.

Promising to do
the impossible was an effective short-term strategy for raising money
and winning midterm elections. But if you keep firing up your supporters
and letting them down, they become disillusioned. They begin to think
the problem might not be Obama and the Democrats. It might be you.

That
same dynamic is happening in the House, where Boehner’s decision to
walk away has emboldened, not chastened, the ultraconservative
revolutionaries in the GOP ranks.

In the Democratic Party, the conflict is ideological — left vs. center-left. In the GOP, the struggle looks existential.

Put
another way, it’s not hard to imagine a party in which there’s room for
both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and you can easily imagine one
supporting the other as standard-bearer. But a tent that can hold, say,
both Trump’s view on undocumented immigrants — hunt them down and kick
them out — and Bush’s support for compassionate reform? That’s not a
political party, it’s a food fight.

The Republican establishment may ultimately find some way to drag one of
its presidential candidates through the primaries. But chaos, Trump has
shown, is the GOP’s new normal.

Vladimir Putin is, in my view, a megalomaniac. He also thinks of himself as the new tsar of Russian in all but formal name with all the delusions of grandeur that fantasy engenders - he's in his own mind perhaps Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Alexander I all rolled into one. Given his short stature, he also seems to suffer from a Napoleon complex. And while he has routinely utilized agendas and excuses modeled on Adolph Hitler's tactics, in the final analysis, he still is pushing for international goals akin to what he sees as his imperial predecessors. As a piece in the New York Times explains, this includes Putin's adventure into Syria. While Putin remembers the goals and fleeting success of Russia's imperial past, he seems to have forgotten some of the disasters of the past, including Russia's Afghanistan debacle and wars that could have been avoided. Here are column highlights:

IN June 1772, Russian forces bombarded, stormed and captured Beirut, a fortress on the coast of Ottoman Syria.
The Russians were backing their ally, a ruthless Arab despot. When they
returned the next year, they occupied Beirut for almost six months.
Then as now, they found Syrian politics a boiling cauldron of
factional-ethnic strife, which they tried to simplify with cannonades
and gunpowder.

Today, President Vladimir V. Putin has many motives in Syria, but we should keep in mind Russia’s
vision of its traditional mission in the Middle East, and how it
informs the Kremlin’s thinking. And not just the Kremlin: Russia’s
Orthodox Church spokesman said that Mr. Putin’s intervention was part of
“the special role our country has always played in the Middle East.”

Russia’s
ties to the region are rooted in its self-assigned role as the defender
of Orthodox Christianity, which it claimed to inherit from the
Byzantine Caesars after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 — hence
“czars.” The czars presented Moscow not just as a Third Rome, but also
as a New Jerusalem, and protector of Christians in the Balkans and the
Arab world, which, including the Holy Places of Jerusalem, were ruled by
the Ottomans after 1517.

They left in 1774, when Russia dropped its Syrian allies in return for
Ottoman concessions over Ukraine and Crimea. Yet a Russian Mediterranean
base was now a strategic aim: Catherine and her partner Prince Potemkin
annexed Crimea, where they founded a Black Sea fleet, then tried to
negotiate a base on Minorca.

[D]uring World War I Russian forces occupied northern Persia and invaded
Ottoman Iraq, nearly taking Baghdad. In 1916, Nicholas II’s foreign
minister, Sergei Sazonov, negotiated the Sykes-Picot-Sazonov Treaty,
which promised Russia Istanbul, sections of Turkey and Kurdistan, and a
share of Jerusalem — a Near Eastern empire foiled by the Bolshevik
Revolution.

Until the recent intervention, the closest Russia came to fighting was
the Israeli-Egyptian War of Attrition from 1967 to 1970, during which
Soviet pilots dueled with Israelis. When Nasser’s successor, Anwar
Sadat, expelled the Russians, they cultivated a trio of dictators,
Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Hafez al-Assad
in Syria. All three, running merciless, dynastic-Mafia regimes behind
the facade of socialistic parties, central planning and Stalinesque
cults of personality, took quickly to their new benefactors . . .

After
the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian influence collapsed and
Moscow came to bitterly resent the Western interventions that destroyed
Mr. Hussein and Colonel Qaddafi. American retreat from the region
grants Mr. Putin, who sees himself in an unbroken tradition of Russian
personal leadership and imperial-national power from the czars to today,
the opportunity to diminish American prestige and project Russia as
indispensable world arbiter. The rescue of Mr. Assad’s son Bashir while
fighting the opposition and Islamic State dovetails with Russia’s
struggle against Chechen jihadis who flock to the black caliphal banners
— and success will bring leverage in Iran and Turkey, where Russia once
had muscle.

That
said, Mr. Putin may end up channeling Catherine and trade Syrian
influence to end Western sanctions and secure annexed Crimea — for this
military showmanship concerns Mr. Putin’s political survival. In some
ways, his defense of Syria’s autocrat is a defense of his own authority
against rebellion.

The power formula in Russia is this: autocracy in the Kremlin in return
for security and prosperity at home, glory abroad — and for now at
least, there’s glamour in the excitement of this Oriental adventure, a
televised “Beau Geste” with Sukhoi bombers.

When
Alexander II launched exotic Asian wars, one of his ministers, Count
Valuev, wrote, “there’s something erotic about all things on distant
frontiers.” Moscow lacks the resources to replace America and will find
in Syria a quagmire, but Russians feel that a great imperial Russia has
always been a player in the Middle East — and boldness counts for much
in this wild world.

Putin is very dangerous, but his latest venture has strong historical precedents. One needs to understand history and Russia's long inferiority complex versus the west and the longing for real or imagined past glories. Sadly, the Russian people continue to be betrayed by their failed leaders - something that has plagued Russia for centuries.

A study at the School of Medicine of the University of California, Los Angeles, provides more bad news for the Christofascists and the bitter, closet old men at the Vatican. These knuckle draggers - and in the case of the Vatican, proponents of 13th century knowledge - continue to whine and state that sexual orientation is a choice and make spittle flecked rants that there is "no gay gene." Thus, being gay and having gay relationships is a "sin" in their ignorance embracing views. The new study found that just nine regions of the human genome predict the sexual orientation of males with up to 70 percent accuracy. Obviously, none of us "chose" to change are DNA. A press release outlines the findings that underscore that sexual orientation is NOT a choice. Here are highlights:

An algorithm using epigenetic information from just nine regions
of the human genome can predict the sexual orientation of males with up
to 70 percent accuracy, according to research presented at the American
Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2015 Annual Meeting in Baltimore.

"To our knowledge, this is the first example of a predictive model
for sexual orientation based on molecular markers," said Tuck C. Ngun,
PhD, first author on the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the
David Geffen School of Medicine of the University of California, Los
Angeles.

Beyond the genetic information contained in DNA, the researchers
examined patterns of DNA methylation - a molecular modification to DNA
that affects when and how strongly a gene is expressed - across the
genome in pairs of identical male twins.

They found that methylation patterns in nine small regions, scattered
across the genome, could be used to predict study participants' sexual
orientation with 70 percent accuracy.

"Previous studies had identified broader regions of chromosomes that
were involved in sexual orientation, but we were able to define these
areas down to the base pair level with our approach," Dr. Ngun said. He
noted that it will take additional research to explain how DNA
methylation in those regions may be related to sexual orientation. The
researchers are currently testing the algorithm's accuracy in a more
general population of men.

"Sexual attraction is such a fundamental part of life, but it's not
something we know a lot about at the genetic and molecular level. I hope
that this research helps us understand ourselves better and why we are
the way we are," Dr. Ngun said.

Ask any gay - or at least those not afflicted by religious brainwashing and associated guilt - and they will tell you that they never chose their sexual orientation. To the extent there is any choice involved, it is merely the choice of how long one is willing to lie to themselves and others.

As I have said before, the Republican Party has become an insane asylum under the control of the patients, many of who suffer from severe delusions and detachment from objective reality. With John Boehner's unexpected announcement last month that he was resigning as Speaker of the House of Representatives, many thought that Kevin McCarthy - not one of my favorite people - would succeed Boehner. Now, McCarthy has thrown the GOP into chaos by his sudden announcement that he would be withdrawing his name from consideration. Whether McCarthy changed his mind after realizing that he's suffer the same difficulties as Boehner, feeling that his honesty about the true nature of the House Benghazi committee was toxic, or knew that some other bombshell might be forthcoming, his withdrawal has left the lunatic right rejoicing and less insane Republicans fearful of what may yet be to come. A column in the Washington Post looks at the batshitery reigning supreme in the GOP. Here are highlights:

Less than a year after a sweeping electoral triumph, Republicans are
on the verge of ceasing to function as a national political party.

The
most powerful and crippling force at work in the ­once-hierarchical GOP
is anger, directed as much at its own leaders as anywhere else.

First,
a contingent of several dozen conservative House members effectively
forced Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) to resign rather than face a
possibly losing battle to hold on to his job. Now they have claimed
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), who had been considered
the favorite to replace Boehner until he announced Thursday that he is
dropping out of the race.

With no obvious replacement for Boehner
in sight, “it is total confusion — a banana republic,” said Rep. Peter
T. King (R-N.Y.). “Any plan, anything you anticipate — who knows what’ll
happen? People are crying, they don’t have any idea how this will
unfold, at all.”

Parallel currents of rage and chaos have been roiling the 2016
presidential race, diminishing hopes that an eventual nominee can bring
order and direction to the increasingly dysfunctional party.

But
government experience has become a liability for Republicans, rather
than a credential. Celebrity billionaire Donald Trump, the leader in
every poll, has rallied the conservative base by mocking the entire GOP
establishment as weak and feckless. Many of the other candidates have
followed his lead.

The forces that have made the House ungovernable are coming from the
same wellspring of insurgency, beginning with the tea party movement,
that propelled the Republicans back into control of Congress.

Battalions of conservative ground troops have come to Capitol Hill in
the past five years with expectations that were not in line with what
could actually be achieved while there is still a Democrat in the White
House.

Disappointed in their ability to follow through on their
campaign promises to turn back President Obama’s policies, they trained
their fire on their own commanders.

For all their gains on the
state and local level, Republicans are deepening the problems that have
cost them the popular vote in all but one of the last six presidential
elections. The divisive and exclusionary rhetoric of their 2016
contenders has hit a chord with primary voters . . . . but threatens to further alienate key groups of voters in an increasingly diverse country.

Their contempt for compromise has also undermined the Republicans’ drive to prove that they can actually govern.

Junior members of Congress no longer have to seek the favor of more
senior ones to rise through the ranks. Modern media has given them the
power to play to a national audience — as presidential contender and
first-term senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has demonstrated in the Senate.

In
July, Cruz went so far as to call Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
(R-Ky.) a liar on the floor of the Senate. Such a breach of decorum
would have been unthinkable in earlier times, but it has burnished
Cruz’s image with the conservative base.

At the Obama White House, officials were not gloating at the Republican
turmoil — in part, because it could pose problems for carrying out their
own agenda. For instance, the president is going to have to rely on a
large number of GOP votes to pass a Pacific Rim free-trade deal that is
drawing opposition from Obama’s own party.

Candidly, I do not know how the Christofascists and Tea Party (a euphemism in my view for Christofascists and white supremacists) can be brought under control . They are simply crazy and logic and reason - and objective reality - get nowhere with them. The GOP establishment allowed them to hijack the party base and now the price may be the ultimate death of the GOP.

The Christofascists remain insistent on securing passage of legislation that underscores their special rights, even when the legislation is unnecessary. And Republican political whores are only too willing to bow and genuflect to Christofascist demands. It's all about making religious extremists and gay haters feel special. A case in point is Florida's absurd and wholly unnecessary "Pastor Protection Act." The Advocate looks at this ridiculous legislation. Here are excerpts:

The U.S. Constitution assures that clergy members won’t be
forced to perform any marriage they don’t endorse, but that’s not good
enough for some Florida lawmakers, who today advanced a piece of state
legislation that does the same thing.

The Pastor Protection Act, approved by the Florida House
Civil Justice Subcommittee, would provide an “extra layer of protection”
for clergy who oppose same-sex marriage, said its sponsor, Republican
Rep. Scott Plakon, according to The Palm Beach Post.

The subcommittee approved the measure by a vote of 9-4, Republicans
in favor, Democrats against. It now goes to the Judiciary Committee,
which will consider whether to move it on to the full House. The Senate
has yet to take it up.

The vote came after the subcommittee heard impassioned testimony both
for and against the bill.Plakon acknowledged that the Constitution’s
First Amendment, guaranteeing freedom of religion, already assures that
clergy members have discretion over who they’ll marry. But because of
“numerous changes in the law and culture,” the state law needs to make
clear that they’re free to decline to perform ceremonies that conflict
with their beliefs, he said.

Some clergy members, from LGBT-friendly denominations such as the
Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Church of Christ, said the bill
is rooted in homophobia. “It’s that somehow an LGBT person who is
looking to get married is a threat to other people of faith,” said Rev.
Brant Copeland of the First Presbyterian Church in Tallahassee. “I urge
you not to adopt this unnecessary and, I think, basically homophobic
bill.”

Texas and Oklahoma have passed similar laws this year, and the idea has been floated in some other states, including Georgia and Tennessee.

The cynic in me wonders how long it will be before we hear about Plakon being involved in a gay sex scandal!

Being gay, one is often only too aware of the toxicity of "real man" Masculinity in Virginia. Gays by definition pose a threat to the sensibilities and self-esteem of those whose sense of self-worth depends on their macho self-image and desperate need to be a "real man." In the wake of the recent Oregon mass shooting, it appears that the killer, Christopher Harper-Mercer may have been one such psychologically unbalanced American male who held a grudge against women and clung to the trappings of supposed masculinity, including an obsession with guns. A piece in Salon looks at the shooter and the frightening online world that he seeming lived in. Here are excerpts:

In the wake of any tragedy, there’s a natural impulse to wonder: How did
this happen? Who was to blame for this? In the week since Christopher
Harper-Mercer’s execution of nine students at an Oregon community college, the question has become the same: Who is at fault here?

Wedged among the proliferation of dank memes, choruses of copycat threats, violent Pepe .gifs, and cries of “Beta Uprising,” the 4chan forum /r9k/ might be closest to actually having an answer. According to the users, women were to blame for this rampage: If “the sluts” had just given it up to Mercer, he might never have gone on to murder innocent people. As horrible as 4chan may be,
this claim is seemingly backed up by Mercer’s own words. In the days
leading up to the attack, he posted complaints on a number of online
forums about being chaste against his wishes. In his rambling manifesto
left at the scene of the crime, he reportedly wrote: “I am going to die
friendless, girlfriendless, and a virgin.”

Mercer’s frustration and rage at being a virgin likely contributed to
his lashing out at innocent bystanders. But the real issue wasn’t that
Mercer was a virgin and that this whole thing could have been avoided
with a pity-fuck. The problem is that Mercer—like the community that it
seems he was a part of—felt that he wasn’t a “real” man because of it.

The state of being a man is a compilation of external influences that ultimately define whether someone is a “real” man or not. Guns, sex, and money
serve as a sort of holy trinity for traditional masculinity, the tropes
by which a supposedly true man is known. When it’s stripped down to its
toxic core,
“what is a man” ends up being defined by how many chicks he can bang,
how much ass he can kick, and how much money and “status” he has.

Of course, for all the swaggering machismo and bravado of these would-be alphas, their concept of masculinity is so fragile that a trending Twitter hashtag can threaten it. When we define so many aspects of “manhood” as being external to just existing, it means that manhood is something that can be taken away from you at any time.

[P]art of being “a man” in the traditional, hyper-masculine sense means
being a virile sex machine. A (male) virgin is, thus, an aberration, a
mistake, and a pretender who doesn’t deserve his penis. The incel boards
and forums are full of young men complaining about how they’re
subhuman, genetic refuse that mistakenly made it off the production
line. They live in deep pain and resentment over the fact that they are
not men the way they feel like they should be.

The more than men believe in the tropes of traditional masculinity
and gender roles, the more they feel the pressure to live up to them,
and the more pain they feel when they believe they fall short. But they
can’t express that pain. After all, the traditional masculine
man isn’t allowed to express pain, weakness, fear, or insecurity.
They’re expected to be stoic, a silent pillar of strength. Their only
acceptable emotion is anger.

Violence is somethinganyone can do. When you’re feeling powerless, then you take that power back—preferably from someone else.

In fact, a study published in the medical journal Injury Prevention
documents this phenomenon quite clearly: Men who feel the most male
discrepancy stress (that is, who feel the worst about not being manly
enough) are also the most likely to have committed violent assaults on
others, as well as committing assaults with a weapon.Gun manufacturers post advertisements featuring loving images of big, erect rifles with the caption:
“Consider your man-card reissued.” The message is clear: You may not
measure up, but you can buy a substitute to make up for it, chock full
of copper-jacketed death sperm.

Charles Harper-Mercer felt he couldn’t measure up as a man by being a
lover, so he decided to show the world just how big his semi-automatic
murder penis was.

Mercer was someone who was obsessed with the
trappings of masculinity that he felt he couldn’t measure up to and
lashed out, as statistics show that so many do.

We need to recognize just how damaging it is to sell the idea of men at
their worst—brutish, violent and barely in control of themselves—is the
only way to be a “real” man. We’ve stuck ourselves with a toxic idea of
masculinity where you continually have to prove you’re a man—being
willing to hurt others in order to do so—instead of manhood being
something inherent.

The defenders of toxic masculinity love to portray those who don’t
conform as being unmanly or beta white-knight manginas—sexual quislings
who seek to betray their gender because they can’t measure up. It’s a
way of derailing the conversation, to pit people against one another
rather than to accept the truth: This form of masculinity has failed
us. It doesn’t produce men; it produces anger, rage, and pain. It
teaches us that the only way to be a man is to aspire to be the worst in
us. We can do better. We can be better.

Obviously, I hold these "real man" types in low regard. They hold gays in low regard if not contempt, but it's really only because they hold themselves in such low regard and because gays threaten their sense of masculinity. Behind most "real man" types you will find a homophobe worried about his own lack of masculinity regardless of the outward bravado.

While Pope Francis and the endless number of bitter old closeted men at the Vatican continue to malign gays and blather about God's plan for male-female relationships during the Church's synod on the family, the Roman Catholic Church remains incapable of avoiding one gay related bombshell after another. On top of yesterday's story of the summary firings of two gay priests, now a story has broken about the Vatican sending gay priests to a monastery to subject them to voodoo like "ex-gay" cures. Never mind that all reputable - i.e., all non-Christofascist - medical and mental health associations condemn so-called conversion therapy. In light of the 300 years it took the Church to admit that it erred in condemning Galileo, this latest embrace of ignorance and bigotry is all too par for the course. Christianity Today looks at this new issue plaguing the Vatican and underscoring its anti-knowledge mindset. Here are highlights:

The Vatican has been sending gay priests to a monastery to "cure" them of homosexuality, a former clergyman has alleged.

Mario Bonfanti says he was asked to go to the Venturini monastery in
Trento, northern Italy, after it was discovered he was gay. Despite
having maintained his vow of celibacy, the priest was dismissed from his
parish in Sardinia three years ago when he refused.

Following Bonfanti's allegations, the head of Venturini, Father
Gianluigi Pasto, told Italian reporters: "I can only say that here we
help the priests become healthy".

The Independent reports that
Fr Pasto denied the monastery is specifically for gay and paedophile
priests in an interview La Repubblica, but did not deny that they may
have come in the past. "Priests come to us for a period of formation and
personal reflection," he said.

The allegations come in a week that the world's eyes are on Rome, as
Pope Francis hosts the Synod on the Family with a particular focus on
marriage and homosexuality.

During the opening Mass on Sunday, the pope reaffirmed Catholic
opposition to gay marriage, but called for the Church to be welcoming
and compassionate towards all people, regardless of their sexuality.

Ahead of the Synod, however, the Vatican dismissed a priest from his
position in the Holy See after he came out as gay in an interview with
Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper.

As I have noted many times, what should a gay Catholic do? Walk - no run - from the Church and get their family members and friends to follow suit. Given the countless times throughout history where the Church has been dead wrong - e.g., supporting slavery, rejecting science and condemning scientists and the intellectually curious, one has to wonder why anyone with a brain listens to the garbage being uttered by the Church hierarchy and the members of the closeted priesthood.

I have had the pleasure of meeting Dustin Lance Black - or Lance as he calls himself - on three occasions and have found him to be a sweet, thoughtful and unassuming individual. He is also someone who has been on a mission to bring marriage equality nationwide and was a founding member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights. Now, Black is engaged to marry Olympian Tom Daley and he has made some touching statements. The Christofascists seek to denigrate same sex love, but Lance's statements cut through to the beauty of loving same sex relationships. Here are excerpts from Gay Star News:

Newly engaged, Oscar winning screenwriter and LGBTI
activist Dustin Lance Black is opening up about his feelings for fiance
Tom Daley and their relationship.

‘I definitely know that we’re better for having each other. We dream
bigger. Things seem so much more possible together. Two and a half years
in and it still feels like every day is a dream.’

The couple announced their engagement with an announcement in a British newspaper last month.

He says of getting married: ‘There’s power in the word, that the word
is understood by society and it means that when you say “I’m married”
or getting married, it’s a promise you make to the person you love, and I
think that promise creates so much. It creates so much potential, and
is understood by so many people.’

Black, who won the Academy Award in 2009 for his screenplay for the
film Milk, has been deeply involved in the fight for same-sex marriage
in the US. He was a founding member of the American Foundation for Equal
Rights which successfully fought in the US Supreme Court for marriage
equality in California.

He recalls the dreams he said in his speech the night he accepted his
Oscar: ‘There’s two things I said: I said full federal equality, and we
have that now in terms of marriage; I also said that one day I hoped
that I’d be able to fall in love and get married. I never dreamed in
that time I would meet somebody and fall in love and get engaged. I just
never knew if that was something I’d be able to appreciate in my own
lifetime.’

I wish them both much happiness. I was especially touched by Lance's comments because my husband often describes me to others as "Someone who Completely Gets Him."

Next month the entire Virginia General Assembly is up for reelection - or preferably, replacement in the case of many of its Republican members. In the noise machine that is the run up to the 2016 presidential election, including the ongoing GOP clown car circus, many Virginians seem oblivious to the election on November 3, 2015, and may fail to vote - something that favors the Republicans whose base, while crazy, tends to always go to the polls. Among the issue to be addressed in the 2016 session of the General Assembly is the issue of Medicaid expansion, something opposed by Republicans largely because it is part of the Affordable Health Care Act championed by Barack Obama. These individuals - who pretend to be the party of faith - happily throw 400,000 some Virginians in the gutter rather than had Obama a success. The Virginian Pilot blasts these modern day Pharisees in a main editorial today. Here are highlights:

REPUBLICAN state lawmakers' refusal to accept billions in Virginians'
federal taxes to subsidize insurance for some 400,000 uninsured people
has repeatedly been exposed as the partisan political ploy that it is.

The expansion of Virginia's managed-care Medicaid program, the most
efficient of two divisions of Medicaid in Virginia, is a prime objective
of Democratic President Barack Obama's signature domestic achievement,
the Affordable Care Act.

The 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the constitutionality
of that federal law, however, left to the respective states a decision
whether to accept the return of federal tax revenue for Medicaid
expansion. In Virginia, where Republicans control both chambers of the
legislature, GOP delegates and senators dug in their heels and refused.

The effects of that fiscally irresponsible position extend far beyond the health care of lower-income, uninsured Virginians.

Republicans have chosen to bleed hospitals in their own districts of
necessary revenue, diminishing access to quality health care while
undermining local and statewide economic development efforts. All so
they can politically oppose a lame duck president over a law twice
declared constitutional and which the GOP doesn't have the votes in
Washington to overturn.

State data show one-third of Virginia's acute-care hospitals lost
money operating in 2013, as the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare
Association pointed out in a statewide public-awareness campaign.
Roughly half of rural Virginia's acute-care hospitals lost money that
year.

Those figures are unsustainable, and they portend a looming crisis
for health care - and for the economy - in Virginia. That crisis could
be averted simply by expanding Medicaid and returning Virginians'
federal tax dollars to the commonwealth.

The health care industry is the top employer in the vast majority of
Virginia's rural counties, providing critical jobs and tax revenue. It's worth noting many of those areas are represented by Republican
legislators, who seem intent on punishing their constituents in order to
score a political victory. Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who has focused
heavily on economic development, campaigned in 2013 on a pledge to
increase health insurance coverage.

Under the law, federal funds would cover 100 percent of costs for
expanding Medicaid coverage through 2016, and then gradually phase down
to a floor of 90 percent in 2020. There is no business case for refusing the return of billions in tax
dollars already paid by residents to improve health care for Virginia's
working poor, shore up Virginia hospitals' ailing financial conditions
and strengthen an industry critical to Virginia's economy.

The super liner U.S. United States was built at Newport News Shipbuilding less than ten miles from where I sit typing this post and was launched in the same year that I was born. In her prime, she was the fastest ocean liner afloat and counted presidents, movie stars and royalty among her passengers. Now, she is a rusting hulk facing the scrape yard if funds are not raised to maintain her while a plan to develop her into a water front attraction and hotel in New York City are completed. The S.S. United States is small compared to some of today's massive cruise ships that resemble mammoth hotels slapped on a hull, but her sleek lines and wind swept superstructure recall the days when crossing the Atlantic was most often for the rich and famous. The New York Times looks at the ship and the fate that I hope she manages to dodge. Here are excerpts:

A
Titanic-sized supership that once ferried presidents, Hollywood
royalty, actual royalty and even the Mona Lisa has a place in the
history books as the fastest oceanliner in the world. The owners are now
racing to avoid having the ship, the S.S. United States, relegated to
the junk heap.

A
preservationist group, the S.S. United States Conservancy, saved the
vessel from being scrapped a few years ago. Its members are working with
a developer to give the mothballed vessel a new life as a stationary
waterfront real-estate development in New York City, the ship’s home port in her heyday.

Their big dreams, however, now face a financial crisis: Short of money, the conservancy
in recent days formally authorized a ship broker to explore the
potential sale to a recycler. In other words, the preservationists might
have to scrap their vessel.

The
conservancy continues to seek out donors, investors or a buyer to
preserve the ship and press forward with development. But unless
something happens by Oct. 31, the group said in a statement, “We will
have no choice but to negotiate the sale of the ship to a responsible
recycler.”

The
decision to seek bids from scrappers was “excruciating,” said Ms.
Gibbs, particularly since the development plan emerged in the last year.
“We’ve never been closer to saving the S.S. United States, and we’ve
never been closer to losing her,” she said.

In
the 1950s and ’60s, the ship was a marvel of technology and elegance,
offering regular passenger service between New York and Europe. The 1952
maiden voyage smashed trans-Atlantic speed records. She was so fast,
her propellers were a Cold War state secret.

Passenger
jets doomed the superliners, however. The S.S. United States left
service in the late 1960s. Today she is docked in Philadelphia, stripped
of her interiors and rusting in the Delaware River across the street
from an Ikea store.

The
redevelopment plan is underway, said Keith Harper, vice president for
design at Gibbs & Cox, the firm that originally designed the S.S.
United States. Late last year, a real estate developer hired the firm to
help devise specific ideas for possible reuse. . . . . The ship has roughly 600,000 square feet of floor space.

Admirers remain optimistic. Among them is John Quadrozzi, whose company
happens to own a pier in Brooklyn big enough to accommodate an
oceanliner. He says he would welcome the ship there, where docking costs
would be considerably lower. The conservancy is considering the move,
if the money can be raised.

The
S.S. United States was conceived with two purposes: to provide luxury
passenger service to and from Europe, and to quickly convert into a
superfast military transport, although that need never arose. Built
partly with government funds, the ship represented a powerful expression
of American postwar optimism and ambition.

Newspapers
speculated on her secret top speed and wrote about her comings and
goings like no airplane route gets written about. In the 1950s and ’60s,
she was featured in a Disney movie, a Munsters movie, and a sequel to
the Marilyn Monroe blockbuster “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” according to a
conservancy history. Her twin red-white-and-blue stacks can be glimpsed
in the opening of “West Side Story.”

America, unlike much of Europe, destroys its history and historic buildings and, in this case, ships. The S.S. United States is one of a kind and I hope the funds are found to save her and make her into a waterfront destination. Consider making a donation here.

This past weekend, Roman Catholic bishops gathered at the Vatican to kick off a second installment of their
synod on so-called family issues. During the lead up to the synod, two gay Catholic priests have been fired from their positions because of their relationships. Further underscoring the Church's animus towards gays, Pope Francis opened the synod by basically repeating his view that God entrusted the earth to the alliance between man and woman: Its
failure deprives the earth of warmth and darkens the sky of hope.” Meanwhile, a former Vatican insider has stated in an interview with German magazine Stern that he believes 50% of priests, including those at the Vatican, are gay. Gay Star News looks at these statements:

David Berger, an openly gay academic who formerly worked for the
Vatican, said the number of gay men working in the Catholic Church was
well above average – even more so in the papal state.

‘In the Vatican, I experienced the number of gay men to be even higher,’ he said in an interview with German magazine Stern. ‘I guess around half [of the men working there].’

‘On one hand it’s down to homosexuality being demonized in the Church. It’s a very severe sin,’ he said.

On the other hand, the image of a celibate priest, who is never
questioned about not having a wife, was very attractive for gay men,
Berger continued, as they wouldn’t have to explain themselves and
wouldn’t be bothered into marriage.

‘So you have the advantage of having many gay men with a guilty conscience.Berger also said the biggest rule in the Vatican was while people
could have gay sex, in public they should always remain true to the
Church’s principles and not talk about it.

‘I think that may be down to being gay being an important apparatus of power,’ Berger told the Stern.

‘After a coming out, those in power don’t have anything left with
which to hold you down. That’s a disaster beyond all expectations.’

David Berger worked as an academic at the Pontifical Academy of St
Thomas Aquinas in Vatican City; when he came out as gay, he was forced
to leave.

It goes without saying that the hypocrisy of these bitter old men is off the proverbial chart. But there is much more involved in the misogyny of the Church and it centers on psychologically damaged, self-loathing closeted men. Michael Bayly, a gay rights activist Catholic and blogger friend, lays out the true level of hypocrisy and dysfunction that is the Catholic Church hierarchy and much of the priesthood. Here are excerpts:

The Roman Catholic priesthood has long been a haven for a certain type
of gay man – one who, for whatever reason, does not experience, or care
to seek to experience in the wider world, validation for who they are
sexually.

Before the rise in the West of the gay liberation movement of the late
60s-early 70s, the priesthood was one of a very few environments where
homosexual men could gather and live together without arousing undue
suspicion. More importantly, it was perhaps the only environment where
they could gain power and experience respect and deference.

Consequently, I think it's fair to say that the priesthood has
historically attracted a disproportionate number of homosexual men. For
many of these men, the price paid for a life of power and prestige
involves the maintaining of a secretive sexual life. . . . . Another price that we know has been paid by many men – both gay and straight – is that of a stunted psycho-sexual development.
One sad consequence of this can be seen in the clergy sex abuse
scandal. I would argue that it's a minority of abuse cases that involve
actual pedophiles, i.e., adults sexually attracted to prepubescent
children. Instead, many, if not most of the caes, involve grown men
attempting to act-out or come to terms with their sexuality with
non-consenting teenagers and/or young adults with whom they share a
similar level of psycho-sexual development.

Just as with heterosexuals, the vast majority of homosexuals can and do
choose to live lives marked by ongoing psycho-sexual growth, loving
relationships, and sexual integrity and health. We see the benefits of
this choice all around us in the lives and relationships of the gay
individuals, couples, and families we know and love.

Where we're not seeing it is in the Roman Catholic priesthood.

This is because the clerical culture of the church, unlike wider
society, continues to denigrate and malign homosexuality and its
expression. And yet we know that this same culture is heavily populated
by homosexual men – not the type "on the outside" that accept and
celebrate the gift of their sexuality, but rather the type that is
self-loathing, secretive, and often psycho-sexually stunted.

A celibate life can be fostered and maintained, but only if sexuality –
in all its beauty and complexity – is acknowledged and respected,
something that's not happening in the priesthood. Gay men in the
priesthood are forced to live secret, isolated, and often sexually
furtive lives.

No good can come from such a state of affairs, as we're painfully witnessing almost on a daily basis. What's stopping the many gay priests and bishops from stepping out of
their closets of secrecy? Is it the lure of the rich trappings of power
and prestige also housed in these closets? Is it fear of losing this
power and prestige? Is it more practical – the fear of simply losing
their position and thus their source of income? Do some really believe
what the clerical leadership teaches about homosexuality?

One thing I do know for sure is that our gay brothers within the
feudal world of the Vatican are giving gay men everywhere a bad name. I
must admit that as a gay Catholic man I resent this. So many of us have
made the difficult journey to a place of self-realization and
integration, and discerned that it's the truly enlightened and
authentically spiritual path to tread. And yet our so-called spiritual
leaders refuse to recognize it, let alone embark on the journey
themselves. I don't want our church to be led by such hypocrites and
cowards.

[T]he whole leadership system must be reformed. We can no longer depend
upon a "good" pope, i.e., one who thinks like us, to come in and make
everything better. A benevolent autocrat is still an autocrat. It's time
we acknowledged that the church took a terribly wrong turn when, around
1600 years ago, it assumed the trappings of empire during the time of Constantine. No more overlords, autocrats, emperor-like popes.

These men want to dictate morality to others and love to condemn other gays, yet they are totally screwed up emotionally and psychologically themselves. Worse yet, they are for the most part totally clueless on matters of family life and intimate relationships, but want to define how others should live.

The recent horrific mass shooting in Oregon has triggered another round of discussion about the need to change America's insane gun laws. As noted in prior posts, most of the GOP sees no need for change - no doubt in large part because of the millions of dollars GOP candidates in particular receive from the NRA. Research has shown that the real financial strength of the NRA comes from the gun manufacturers and not the hunters who allow themselves to be used as tools by the ever mercenary gun manufacturers and their hit man, Wayne LaPierre who strikes me as a totally amoral - if not immoral - individual who makes a plush living pushing policies that ultimately kill people. A piece in Salon looks at LaPierre and the death that he and the NRA peddle. Here are some highlights:

Although 26-year-old Christopher Harper-Mercer pulled the trigger on
the gun that killed nine people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon on
Thursday, Wayne LaPierre, the fanatic executive vice president of the
National Rifle Association, also has blood on his hands.

LaPierre,
who has worked for the NRA since 1978 and served as its top official
since 1991, is the organization’s hit man when it comes to intimidating
elected officials to oppose any kind of sensible gun control laws,
including a federal law requiring background checks on would-be gun
buyers and a national registry of guns. LaPierre likes to fulminate
about gun owners’ rights. But he’s been silent on the Oregon killings,
just like he’s been silent after the murders of other innocent victims
of America’s epidemic of gun violence.

For decades, the NRA has
fought every effort to get Congress and states to adopt reasonable laws
that would make it much less likely for people like Harper-Mercer to
obtain a gun. The NRA even defends the right of Americans to carry
concealed weapons in bars, churches, schools, universities, and
elsewhere. This poses a huge threat to police and civilians alike.

Harper-Mercer was obviously an emotionally troubled man. . . . . Although the murderer’s psychology and motives may be fascinating, it
should not be the major focus. There are plenty of deranged people in
the world, but in most well-off countries they can’t easily get their
hands on a firearm.

In 2013, there were 33,636 deaths
from firearm violence in the United States, including 11,208 homicides
(31 a day) and 21,175 suicides. Firearms were used in 69.6 percent of
all homicides that year. Of course, many more people are injured — some
seriously and permanently — by gun violence.

According to the
Center for Disease Control (CDC), the medical cost of treating non-fatal
gun injuries totaled $3.7 billion in 2005. The direct medical costs of
treating fatal gun injuries combined with the economic damages of lost
lives totaled $37 billion.

The Umpqua Community College incident was the 264th mass shooting in the country this year, according to the Washington Post, which defines a mass shooting as involving at least four people shot. In those incidents, 380 people were killed.

The NRA has two knee-jerk responses to the epidemic of gun violence.
The first is that the Second Amendment gives all Americans the right to
possess guns of all kinds — not just hunting rifles but machine guns and
semi-automatics. Efforts to restrict gun sales and ownership are,
according to the NRA, an assault on our constitutional freedoms.

The
second is the cliché that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
To the NRA, gun laws have nothing to do with the epidemic of
gun-related killings. This contradicts research documenting that states with stronger gun laws have fewer gun-related deaths.

[S]ince the Newtown massacre, most new state laws have loosened, rather
than tightened, gun restrictions, according to the Pew Research Center.

One
of the NRA’s biggest victories occurred in 2003, when passed a law
sponsored by Rep. Todd Tiahrt, a former Republican congressman from
Kansas that makes it more difficult for public safety officials to shut
down the illegal market in gun sales. A handful of gun dealers are
responsible for most of the guns used in crimes and seized by law
enforcement officials.

Under LaPierre’s leadership, the NRA has not only dramatically expanded
its ties to the gun manufacturers, but has also linked the NRA to the
far right, including the Tea Party. LaPierre is a regular presence at
gatherings of extreme right-wing groups, whose paranoid warnings about
the threat of tyranny and Obama’s secret plan to confiscate all guns are
meant to scare Americans into buying more guns and joining the NRA.

A 2014 Pew Research Center survey
found that gun ownership is concentrated among older adults, rural
residents, and whites, especially white Southerners. The NRA is able to
mobilize a small but very rabid and vocal group of gun owners — as well
as owners of gun shops — to attend rallies, write letters to newspapers
and comments on blog sites, and contact elected officials.

Every American grieves for the families and friends of the people killed
in Oregon this week. But until we tame the power of the NRA, we can
expect more killings like this, a part of the deadly daily diet of
murders throughout America committed by angry gun-toting people whose
“freedom” to own weapons of mass destruction that the NRA defends.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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